let me begin by thanking our vice president, joe biden, for your dedication, joe, to this issue, for bringing so many different voices to the table, because while reducing gun violence is a complicated challenge, protecting our children from harm shouldn't be a divisive one. over the month since the tragedy in newtown, we've heard from so many, and obviously none have affected us more than the families of those gorgeous children and their teachers and guardians who were lost, and so we're grateful for all of you taking the time to be here and recognizing that we honor their memories in part by doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again. we also heard from unexpected people. in particular, i started getting a lot of letters from kids. four of them are here today. graham, julia, kenny and taja. they're pretty represented of some of the messages that i got. these are some pretty smart letters from some pretty smart young people. henna, a third grader. you can go ahead and wave, henna. that's you. henna wrote, i feel terrible for the parents who lost their children. i l